Laemmles to give movie lovers taste of film festival fare

Feel like going to a film festival Thursday night but, y'know, don't have the funds for Toronto or Venice?

You can head on over to the Laemmle's NoHo 7 for Film Festival Flix.

Inaugurated Wednesday at Laemmle's Playhouse 7 in Pasadena, FFF plans to present one-night-only screenings of worthy but distributor-less features from festivals worldwide at local venues throughout the country - beginning here - every month. There will also be photo op hoopla, Q&As with talent from the films, contest-winning local short films and, in Thursday night's NoHo case, a post-screening reception at Big Wings.

"I got the idea from serving on panels at various film festivals, and seeing how many films became audience favorites and award-winners, only to fall through the cracks," President/CEO Benjamin Oberman - a Valley Village-based producer of documentaries and commercials - said of creating Film Festival Flix. "I believed that there was absolutely an audience who really would love to see these films and didn't have the time and money to travel the world seeing them."

After Thursday night's NoHo screenings, the Australian anger-management drama "Face to Face" and South African horror flick "Expiration" travel to venues in New Orleans, Miami, Colorado, Iowa and elsewhere. FFF will return to Pasadena on the first Wednesday in October and NoHo the first Thursday with an all-new program, and hopefully repeat the pattern for many months to come.

Laemmle Theatres President Greg Laemmle thinks FFF is a great idea in an era when acclaimed foreign and indie films can find it difficult to attain commercial theatrical distribution without a marquee star or literary pedigree attached - and sometimes not even then.

"We're trying to create more opportunity for more film to hit screens in L.A.," said Laemmle, whose family has operated the regional arthouse chain since the 1930s. "Not everything needs to open for a full, one-week engagement, so programs like Film Festival Flix provide an opportunity for people to see things that otherwise wouldn't be seen in this market."

Oberman plans to capitalize on local promotion and publicity for the live minifests to drive traffic to filmfestivalflix.com, where people can purchase Internet streams and DVDs of FFF movies day-and-date with their L.A. openings, as well as tickets to theatrical screenings.

Oberman's distribution company, Mousetrap Films, buys these rights from the filmmakers. After that initial advance has been recouped, Oberman's company takes distribution fees and returns the remainder of profits to the filmmakers.

Which sounds, at least, better than your festival darling going straight to DVD for a (usually picayune) onetime payment. Plus, folks who otherwise wouldn't get to see it in theaters now get that chance - with some of the fun, excitement and spirit of exploration that's a big part of the film festival experience.

"I'd poll people standing in line at Sundance, Toronto, various film festivals about what they were there to see," Oberman recalled. "I started hearing answers like `Whatever's at 2 p.m.' They didn't know what it was, who was in it, sometimes not even what it was called.

"I realized that people love being part of an event," concluded Oberman. "If it's got a brand and they trust what is curated and it happens in a digestible, regular chunk, then they would come out each month and discover new films."